


Another You

by RiverTalesien



Category: The 100 (TV), clexa - Fandom
Genre: F/F, Gen, Missing Scene, Praimfaya, Survival, pre/post 5x01
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-06-29 13:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15730242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverTalesien/pseuds/RiverTalesien
Summary: This is a missing scene from 5x01 after Clarke has survived praimfaya.  Follows her thoughts from Becca's lab to Polis to Shallow Valley and finding Madi.If there's interest, this might go more than a one-shot.  I wouldn't mind making this a little series about their six years together, and develop this along as a fix-it to bring Lexa back.  Let me know!





	1. Chapter 1

Becca’s lab has gone dark except for the emergency lights, dim but enough. 

 

Clarke knows she is safe, for now, but with the power going out and being sealed in, she could run out of oxygen at any moment. She has to think and work fast. 

 

She finds a backpack that can carry some supplies. She scours the lab looking for anything food-related, looking for medical supplies, bandages, anything to protect from the elements. She needs to find the generator and make sure it can still run for a while. She manages all of this. 

 

She discovers the vents and makes sure they are open enough so she can breathe in case everything else shuts down and she can’t get out. She’s really worried about not being able to get out and find food and fresh water. She’s discovered a small cache of protein bars from a century before that must have been frozen. They taste horrible and probably have little in the way of nutritional value, but she won’t starve. Right away. And there is water. Maybe enough for a week or more if she rations it right. But she’s in trouble. She knows it. She shuts off anything non-essential to conserve what is left in the generator. 

She spends so many nights awake, holding back the tears, the horror of it all. She has no way of knowing if anyone else survived. No way of contacting anyone. She has to wait years, if she has that long herself, before she might know. She has to believe the others have survived, that her mom is ok, that Octavia will do the right things, that Raven is a genius for a reason. She doesn’t want to focus on anything else. But she can’t help herself. 

She finds so many old notebooks and pencils and she can only think of one thing. She daydreams. She knows it’s dangerous for her sanity, but she can’t help herself. 

 

Lexa, in her armor, with her sash and sword, or just her coat, a casual day; Lexa reading, drawing on her maps, riding her horse. Her beautiful, strange throne. Lexa fighting Roan. Lexa with Aden and the other Nightbloods. Polis Tower from a distance. All those candles. Lexa’s room. Lexa’s bed. 

_The Flame._

 

While she still sees it all so clearly in her head, she fills one notebook after another with nothing but images from Polis. She even draws Titus, tries to remember the tattoos on his head. They meant something, once. She tries to draw the market, the people she saw, and the children she met. There was the fishmonger who would gossip about anything, offering her smoked salmon that was like a taste of heaven. Indra. Anya. Gustus. 

The clan symbols. 

Someone has to remember it all. 

 

She remembers Lexa’s tattoos, sometimes finds herself tracing them on her own arms with a pen. 

Then she has to stop. If she keeps going, she sees her on the bed, black blood seeping through the furs, through her hands, how she panicked, how she couldn’t think what to do. How she failed. How even in death, in a city that wasn’t really there, Lexa didn’t hate her or blame her. She had kept her word, her promise of faithfulness.

Even in death, Lexa loved her. 

It is that moment, waking in Lexa’s arms, that moment of pure joy at seeing her again, that she hangs on to hardest. The moment when her love came back, when everything was going to be all right. 

She finds her way to sleep. 

 

*

 

The initial burn-off ends more quickly than expected. She knows she can go outside, explore, find out how bad it all is. She dreads it, but she’s got to get out of there. 

She packs up her bag with all she can: the protein bars, water bottles, notebooks, and the map she found and re-drew. A knife, her gun (why has she never lost it), whatever might be of use. 

It takes her a while to open the hatch. She quickly realizes that she is buried and has to dig her way out. There is so much dirt and sand. 

It is the craziest sort of luck that she finds the rover, spends days digging it out. It’s even crazier that the charge system works. She gets it running. It must be a good sign. 

*

Polis is no more. 

The ruined city built over a ruined city. In ruins. 

Polis tower survived one nuclear catastrophe but it couldn’t survive two. 

 

Lexa’s home is gone. For a moment, she thinks about the beautifully carved bed, evidence of how gifted the Grounders were, how capable. How they had been so wronged by her people. It’s all dust, now. 

 

She can’t even open the hatch. 

 

Then she sees it: one last something. One bit of Lexa is still left. That strange, beautiful throne with its gnarled, twisted arms and back. Of course it survived. 

 

The roof is about to collapse, she has to work carefully, but she pries a bit of it apart, one last piece of Lexa to lean on, to help her through. 

Then no more.

 

She drives away from the ruins, from the last of her love, from the hope that lies beneath, unaware. 

 

*

 

All is lost. But she is not with you and _you can’t do it._ You can’t. If you do it, all their sacrifices were for nothing, all their love, for nothing. You must go on so that something of them, of all you loved, is still in the world. You do it for them. 

You do it for _her._

 

*

You had never visited Shallow Valley before, not even in your wild wanderings after the fall of Mt. Weather. It’s almost as if a piece of the world was put aside, just for you. You’d almost accuse Lexa of setting it up, something she would do, and you smile. You have to find a way. 

 

Once the bodies are taken care of, you can rest. There is water. You can drink it. You can bathe. There is food. You can eat it. You will be okay. Five years isn’t very long. Not long at all. 

You’ve done this before: you had a year to yourself and you’ll do what you did then. 

There is nothing to thank Becca for, but you’re glad she kept notebooks. 

 

*

 

How, you wonder, screaming at yourself in agony, how did _bear traps_ survive the end of the world? So many good things lost, but _bear traps_ are still around. 

 

The girl has calmed somewhat, but she won’t go near you. Her wild hair and wild eyes make you think of yourself once, did you look like that to Lexa? Is this what Roan found in the woods? 

 

She barely speaks her own language, much less any English, so you have to resort to other means of communication. You can’t offer her food, she finds her own well enough. Better than you, even. Only the drawings seem to interest her, especially the ones of Grounders, of her clan symbol. 

You know you’re getting through when you wake up and she’s sitting there, in the corner, watching you. She’s hurt herself somehow and she’s bleeding. 

You get up, slowly and find the bandages in your pack. There’s some 100-year old antibacterial cream, but she’s already survived nuclear fallout, so it probably would make no difference. 

 

She is still as you clean the wound, a jagged cut along the inside of her hand. You’ve been through this before and it’s starting to hurt, and there are tears in your eyes as you wrap the bandage around it. She sees them. She reaches up and touches your face. She shows you her tears, too. 

 

She surprises you, then, when she reaches for you, holds onto you like a lifeline. She’s just a little girl and she’s lost her mother, maybe more. She’s just a little girl and she’s scared and there is no one else. 

You don’t even think, you hold her close, and rock her, as your mother used to do with you when you were small and had a nightmare. If you could think of a song, you’d sing it. But there are no songs anymore and it might frighten her. You pull her into bed with you and hold her until she sleeps, until you both sleep.

 

*

The next day, you show her how you wash your clothes and bathe, and she knows, she knows, this is nothing new, but it is new that you want to help her wash. She has so much dirt and grime and god-knows-what-else caked into her skin, you’re surprised she isn’t sprouting roots. She wades in, but she isn’t happy and you won’t let her get her hand wet, and she doesn’t understand and does it anyway and it stings and she runs off again. 

You know it’s pointless to chase, she’s only watching you now from a tree, so you decide setting an example might be better. You wet your hair and use the grounder soap you found and you feel so clean, you just want to drift for a while. There’s a beautiful, woodsy smell all around you, there are flowers and while you haven’t heard any birds, you can imagine. And you hum. You hum until you sing. A song your dad loved. Not all the songs are gone.

 

_There’s a new world somewhere_  
They call the Promised Land  
And I’ll be there someday  
If you would hold my hand  
I still need you there beside me  
No matter what I do  
For I know I’ll never find another you 

 

She’s returned, seating herself on a rock with her feet dangling in. She’s naked and shivering a little, but you don’t go near her. You leave the soap where she can get it and you get out, drying yourself in the sun, waiting for your clothes to do the same. 

You pretend not to watch her as she slides into the water, holding her bandaged hand up high. It’s almost comical and you smile as she reaches for the soap and the cloth and does her best to copy your movements. She struggles with her hair, though and you decide this might be the right time. 

Approaching the water slowly, you run your hands into your hair and point at hers. It’s so long and snarled it might take hours to wash it. You wonder if she’d let you cut it off. Knowing how grounders feel about their hair, you decide it might be better not to try. 

She watches you, still wary, but she doesn’t run off. You sit yourself by the water again and start braiding your hair, having some trouble doing so. She watches you, curious, but it isn’t solving her problem. You make your gesture again. She nods, finally and you swim to her, and behind her. 

 

It does feel like hours before you’ve managed to wash out all the dirt and untangled the worst of the knots. Your heart is in your mouth the entire time. You can only think how it happened, how terrified she must have been when everyone around her starting dying, when she was left alone. She can’t be more than six and she survived, alone, _for months._ You remember that old movie they used to play on the Ark, about the alien monster and the woman who went to the planet where the aliens had taken over. Except for this little girl, this one lonely, brave, strong little girl.

 

She looks up at you, timid, and you can see her eyes now, a shade of green so familiar your heart almost stops. You slow your braiding to search a little, and it leaves you a little breathless, a little scared. 

 

_They might be related._

 

She points to herself with her good hand and whispers at you.

 

“Madi.” 

 

She points to you.

 

“Clarke,” you say, surprised how much your throat hurts when you speak. 

 

She points to your mouth and makes a humming noise. She liked your song. Do it again.

 

She turns and you resume your braiding. Taking a deep breath, you resume your song. 

 

__  
There is always someone  
For each of us they say  
And you’ll be my someone  
Forever and a day  
I could search the whole world over  
Until my life is through  
But I know I’ll never find another you 

__  
It’s a long, long journey  
So stay by my side  
When I walk through the storm  
You’ll be my guide  
Be my guide 

_If they gave me a fortune_  
My pleasure would be small  
I could lose it all tomorrow  
And never mind at all  
But if I should lose your love dear  
I don’t know what I’d do  
For I know I’ll never find another you 

 

*

Of all the things the world takes from you, it might be more surprising what it gives back. 

 

You can almost imagine Lexa set it all up, arranged everything for you, even a smaller version of herself to keep you company. She would. It’s how you think of her now: far away, but always watching, always making sure. She sent a prince after you once. There was never any telling what she was capable of. Anything. Everything. 

It’s how you live now: the widow with a child to bring up. She might be hers. 

She will be yours.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With time on her hands, Clarke turns to educating Madi and discovering more of Becca's history while pondering her own: the hows and whys of their journey and fight to the ground, not all of it transparent at the time, suddenly becoming clearer in the quiet of this now-empty world. 
> 
> And the mystery of Lexa, lost but still longed for, becomes clearer, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! This story deals so much with Clarke's interior self, it's easy to find yourself lost in a maze and having to regroup and edit so it doesn't meander too far. 
> 
> As always, if you'd like to read more of this one, let me know and please share your questions or comments with me. You can also visit me on Tumblr @rivertalesien. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

She isn’t supposed to touch your books, she knows better, but she wants to see her again. 

 

“ _Heda, Heda."_

 

She pours over all your drawings, examining each line closely, especially the eyes. She gets so excited over seeing Lexa on her horse, or fighting Roan; it’s obvious she must have seen Lexa at least once before; maybe her parents took her to Polis? Madi cannot articulate much, but seeing someone she knew, must give her hope or some kind of happiness. 

 

This worries you more than you care to admit. She’s started to ask for pictures of _nomon_ , but you didn’t know her. You try to imagine Madi, older, and it still looks a little like Lexa. She doesn’t seem to care. Or maybe she’s starting to forget. Maybe she sees them as the same person. Maybe that’s just how children see everything.

 

Or is it how you see things now? 

 

She’s such a perfect little copy: when she stands, holding her spear, fishing, she never misses. The way her head tilts to one side when she’s listening to you or lost in her own thoughts. The way she holds herself. The way she lifts her chin when she’s decided something. 

 

She’s decided to call you _nomon._

 

Some part of you panics a little, it’s too soon, and she doesn’t really know you. But you’re all she has. She’s all you have. You don’t feel worthy. You must have burned her real mother’s remains when you arrived. You didn’t even stop to look at her, at them. 

 

“Clarke,” you insist. 

“Nomon,” she says.

 

“No, Clarke.” 

 

“ _Clarke._ ” 

 

The inflection is softer, but you can pretend. 

 

=========================================

 

Your little Eden holds all two small people could want and you know there is no need to worry over survival…for the next five years, anyway. 

So you try to use your time as wisely as you can.

You start writing alphabets and multiplication tables and as much history as you can remember. What you remember is little better than an outline of famous names and events, and you hope it’s enough. There are too many more recent things you don’t want to start forgetting. 

The history of the Ark, the history as you were told and the truth that you learned much later, in the City of Light. You want to connect all the threads properly, but carefully, so Madi’s understanding isn’t blighted by your opinions. It isn’t easy.

The threads start with Becca and A.L.I.E. and you know you’ll want more, will have to go back to the lab, but it’s a start. You spin the tale further, from the end of the world, to the survivors underground and in the sky, to the first Commanders and the first Chancellors, to the Mountain Men and the desperation of survival that made monsters of them all. 

And Madi soaks it all up like a perfect sponge.

 

She doesn’t like English at first and gives you unhappy sneers when you start the lessons. It occurs to you that it might be a bit…well, _colonialist_ of you, that colonialism did enough damage to her people and you start again. Trig, as far as you know, was never written down and never did make much sense to you, but you learned enough so you do your best phonetically. It’s in this manner that you start to find connections to old words and Madi Sponge kicks in, helping you fill in the blanks in your own knowledge, but it always comes down to the same thing:

 

“Nomon.”

 

She touches your forehead then points at your sketches, always to Lexa, to “Heda” and it feels like a mystery you’re trying to unravel. 

 

====================================

 

Exploring the valley is a good distraction from lessons and puzzles that do not have enough pieces to complete: two people trying to find a mutual language and still struggling. But exploring, hunting, gathering, that you can do without much fuss.

 

It is the most impossible of realities, you decide: how did the catastrophe not touch this land? How could it have been protected? Is it possible there are more like it, around the world? You don't want to speculate too much, as there is nothing you can do about it, either way, but you’ve always been curious about others being alive elsewhere (if Lexa’s people made it, there had to have been others, there must have been). 

You let your thoughts be troubled by an old question now: how did we _not_ know? How was the Ark ignorant of life below? The equipment was available; and so much should have been visible, like the flame on Polis Tower burning day and night, for years. Someone had to have known. Someone had to have seen it. How is it possible you were able to land so close, how was it just a coincidence? How was the information about Mt. Weather so wrong and how did no one know about the Grounders?

Unless someone did, of course, isn’t that more likely? Wouldn’t it have made sense? But only if you believe in the extreme and you suddenly find the old ideas easier to court.

_The hundred were an offering._

_We were supposed to reach Mt. Weather._

_They had our names._

_How?_

 

You look at the radio you carry with you that never works. 

 

The what-ifs start forming.

 

What if Jaha knew? What if all the Chancellors knew? What if they’d been in contact with Mt. Weather from the beginning? What if Mt. Weather made the invitation, promised to help Jaha stay in power once his people were on the ground? He just had to make an offering. 

 

_They needed our blood._

 

_We were expendable._

 

So many things that should never have happened: a whole history that could have been different, but for the treachery and greed of shortsighted men. 

 

There is little animal life left in the parts of the valley you roam; only small rodents and squirrels from all you can tell. You haven’t seen a wild thing since before the fire and you wonder how it could ever come back. The Grounder’s sheep and cattle are gone. The horses are gone. The wild cats and mutant gorillas are gone. This is what extinction looks like: a single stretch of green in an empty world. Not a bird in the sky. Only the scurry of the burrowers, the hapless worms. 

The fish, surprisingly, are plentiful. 

With so many of their natural predators gone, they flourish in the rivers and streams and the small lakes that dot the valley. You feel grateful and sad. You remember things that are useless, but they help take up the day as you walk, as you sketch out your maps and show Madi how to make points of reference. 

 

Lexa did not eat meat very often, if at all; she did not like to consume that which her people did not have enough of. She made sure the hunters fed the clans first. While no one in the tower starved, not by any means, Lexa would sit quietly at meals, eating a simple broth with bread or vegetables, listening to the noise of her Nightbloods as they chattered about the day, their training, and the gossip in the city. 

How Aden tried to be like her. Sit like her. Eat like her. 

You see Madi copying you sometimes, trying her own drawings, or sitting the way you do before the fire. 

 

If he had lived, he might have shot up a few inches by now. Might be looking like a proper young man. If he had lived, he would have been Heda, and he would have kept Lexa’s promise because he loved her (they all loved her, her people _loved_ her). They would have found a way, a better way, to survive the fire. 

He might be here right now, with the other Nightbloods, for Lexa had forbidden another bloody conclave; they would treat Madi like a little sister and tell her all about their dead Heda and you would listen and once everyone had gone to bed you would sit on your own and let the tears and the aching take you because there would be no holding it back anymore. 

 

How wrong did everything have to go? 

 

You still feel the sting of your shame as you had listened to Jaha, let him rule your mind long enough to take the bunker. Long enough to take an easy path. You would have left Lexa’s people out to die. 

“Our people.”

 

You can’t shake the image: on her knees, she pledged her life to you, she changed her laws, withheld a revenge that her people deserved, all for you. It was all for you. And how did you repay her?

 

You thought you were doing the right thing; trying to steal it all, take a short cut because there was no time for anything else. Your mistake led to a bloody conclave. Your mistake led to terrifying compromise with thousands of lives still lost, left out in an unforgiving rain. 

 

She looked at you as if the sun rose and set wherever you walked. 

 

What would she think of you now?

 

The generator is still functioning; there is enough light to make one more trip through Becca’s things and this time there is help.

 

You opened the safe in the office by simply dropping it from the window to the floor below. The door falls open on its hinge and the diaries and envelopes spill out. Some of the letters look official, government and corporate agencies, several from one called Eligius. Madi piles all of it in a bag while you collect all the empty notebooks and writing utensils you left behind before. 

You remember the cache of lockers below the offices and place all the odd bits of clothing, towels and a couple pairs of boots in another bag. You’re reaching the end of Becca’s usefulness to the last of humanity on Earth. How ironic it wasn't her technological inventions at all, but spare clothes and writing pads, a box of old tools, a few old books. 

You feel like there must be something more and you find it in the last of the lockers: a portable radio with antennae. You’ve no idea if it will work, but it has a solar panel and that gives you some hope. Maybe you can reach your mother in the bunker. Maybe you can reach Raven in the sky. You have to believe they are all alive. The radio gives you more hope than you’ve had in a while and it makes Madi curious. 

 

_We are not lost. We will be found._

 

Madi isn’t happy have to help carry all this stuff, she wants to carry the “tech” but you won't risk any damage. This is the last of Becca's things. The two of you are maybe the last of anyone, ever and there might be no point to any of it, but it’s part of what ties you to the world, keeps you from drifting off. 

 

_Lexa would have known everything. Becca’s memories, her knowledge; Lexa had to know and had to keep silent, lest her people’s beliefs shatter and the chaos that would follow; the chaos that did follow. Lexa would have found a better way. Thousands more would have survived. She would have known._

 

_And what do you know now, my love? Do you sleep? Are you dreaming?_

 

You close the hatch for the last time and gaze westward, where not far off a pile of rubble has cut you off from your people and whatever is left of the other half of your soul, etched in a pane of sand.

 

==================================================

 

Becca’s diaries would be fascinating if they weren’t about technology that will never exist or exist again. 

DNA editing, cloning, prosthetic enhancements, an early form of night blood to protect from intense radiation exposure: so many ways to build a better human. Becca practically invented a super soldier program and handed it to the Eligius Mining Company. AI-controlled spacecraft, cryo-chambers, shared VR immersive entertainment, seed vaults, synthetic limb and organ repair. Artificial wombs?

Off-world mining? Really?

No, that couldn’t be all of it. 

A whole government-plotted conspiracy of space exploration, designed to find a new home for Earth’s elites and their soon-to-be-slaves. 

 

You want to laugh at it all, what a joke of human weakness: so fearful of death, of an imminent loss of power through an election all their influence couldn’t corrupt, they made to flee, like vandals in the night.  


ALIE showed them.

 

But what if one of them had succeeded? What if, far off, a small outpost of humanity still exists?

 

No. They didn’t have the engines. They couldn't have. 80,000 years to the nearest star. Could anyone sleep that long? 

 

Madi sleeps in fits and starts, but sometimes she hardly stirs. She reminds you of her and you want to slap yourself for thinking it. 

At least she can wake.

 

You don’t want to think about her, trapped, without form, perhaps driven mad in a nightmare existence and it drives you up, keeps you awake, sends you back to the radio, to the one hope you keep to yourself.

 

You’ve told Madi you're trying to reach your friends in space, or the others, underground. There is never an answer, but you must try, each day, when the skies are clear; you even let her talk to them, sometimes, telling them about her day, how many fish she caught, the stories you told her about seeing Raven for the first time, how she’d like to meet Monty and ask for help with her potato patch. She speaks Trig to Emori (and Echo, you haven’t forgotten her) and reassures Bellamy that Octavia is strong, Indra is with her, and they’ll keep everyone going. Five years isn’t too long. Every day the same questions and reassurances; they must be listening.

 

You know that she can’t; it isn't possible, but you do it anyway. You do it when Madi is asleep and the loneliness seeps into your body like a fever you can’t shake. Every conversation you should have had, you have now. You can't let go. Ever. 

 

_I keep thinking about your hands. I don’t know why. I keep trying to draw them. You had such long fingers. You could have been a piano player. Did you know what a piano was? Did you ever hear music from before? I used to love listening to women singers. Do you know who Ella Fitzgerald was? Amy Winehouse? I try to think of them now but I can barely remember. Just a few words sometimes. You took the part that once was my heart. Why not take all of me? For you I was a flame. Love is a losing game. It really bothers me, sometimes, that I can’t hear them anymore. I wish we could have listened together. I wish I could have shown you how to dance._

_Who is she, Lexa? Who is she to you? She's too little, she doesn't remember. You know. I know you know. I hate that you know and I don’t. I have to make all of it up and no one can stop me but it makes everything a lie._

 

_I shouldn’t have been, I was so angry, but I couldn’t help it. Looking down at you, looking at me like that, swearing yourself to me, I wanted to own you so much. I was ready to kill you, ready to claw your stupid face to shreds. I just wanted you to hurt. And I couldn’t do it. I held a knife to your throat and all I really wanted was to wish it all away and kiss you again._

 

_The last thing I need right now is to want you. I can’t think like that. It’s fucking me up so much. I dreamed we were at the lake, alone, making love in the dark. For half a second it was so real. I could feel your mouth on my neck, on my tits, on my cunt. You were everywhere and I couldn’t come. I can’t. I can’t think about this._

 

_I look at her sometimes and I see you. She has your eyes, I think. You never knew your family. Or did you? What were the secrets Costia died for, Lex? Would you ever have told me everything?_

 

The radio hisses and crackles like something angry is trying to get through; you will spend every night like this, from now until it finally ends, locked in the tide of your suffering, praying the moon shows you a little mercy. 

 

In the small bed in the small house that Madi knows so well, you do your best to find sleep, the sound of the girl’s breathing not far off, smooth and even. Your eyes trace the knots and scars on the ceiling and you want to laugh when you finally see it, just over the door, in the moonlight, what must be a family symbol, like a crest or herald: familiar lines in layers tapering into pointed swirls. 

 

_It was my mother’s and hers before her. I am the third._

 

You never asked if there was a fourth. 

 

She turns lightly in her sleep, only troubled for a moment.

 

And you know. 

You know.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like it, let me know! You can follow me on Tumblr @rivertalesien. Happy to hear from you! 
> 
> Lyrics to "I'll Never Find Another You" by Tom Springfield. This is the 1964 version recorded by The Seekers.


End file.
